“Far-left political terrorism is not a recent-day, modern novelty,” declared Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the recent Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism. For most of the modern era, it was the dominant form of political violence.
“Here in the United States, the share of left-wing terrorist attacks and plots has risen to levels not seen in decades,” noted Secretary Rubio. “In Germany, far-left violence has jumped by more than 40 percent in just the last year alone. In Greece, more than 80 percent of radical violence is now driven by far-left and anarchist actors.”
There has been “an all-out assault on our immigration officers, sniper attacks, explosives, armed ambushes,” stated Secretary Rubio. “A transgender shooter opening fire on Catholic elementary school students as they pray, his gun marked with slogans like, ‘Where is your God now?’ A health care executive executed in cold blood in the streets. Multiple assassination attempts on a sitting president. And the murder of the greatest conservative activist of a generation,” [Charlie Kirk] who was shot and killed while speaking to a crowd of students.
“This is a distinctive and unique evil,” warned Secretary Rubio.
“It is a poisonous resentment cloaked in the language of equality and justice and liberation, an overwhelming need to tear down what greater men have built, to wreck what is beautiful and what is right.”
These architects of revolutionary violence pose a transnational threat, declared Secretary Rubio. Antifa militants, for example, travel from across Europe and to the Americas to participate in each other’s attacks, to funnel propaganda and training materials and target information through shared encrypted channels, moving through underground networks of safe houses and finance, and sustain their operations through transnational funds.
And they work alongside hostile foreign states that share their mission, like Iranian proxy networks who are increasingly tied to leftist militant groups around the world. The Cuban regime’s sprawling intelligence network helped to build the far-left in the United States and elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere.
Under President Donald Trump, for the first time, the United States is building the strategy to defeat the scourge of far-left terror. The President signed National Security Presidential Memorandum number 7, outlining a comprehensive strategy to investigate and disrupt Antifa terror networks and their allies. Last November, the State Department designated four violent far-left extremist groups as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, and there will be more designations soon.
In December, the State Department announced Rewards for Justice offering up to $10 million for information disrupting the financing behind these groups.
It is time for the people of the civilized world to defend themselves, to stand united against this encroaching darkness and fight.